China Fearful Economy Is Becoming Too Heated

On the record

April 30, 1993

BEIJING — China has started taking steps to cool the economic fever gripping the country. In a series of announcements this week, China has ordered a clamp on unapproved foreign-exchange trading, a halt to speculative currency-futures trading and a re-registration of all futures brokerage houses. On Thursday, a Beijing-controlled Hong Kong newspaper quoted a central government leader as telling enterprises to throttle back on investment programs, saying China's phenomenal growth in 1992 was too fast to sustain. Gross domestic product grew by 12.8 percent in 1992, and Chinese economists now predict 13 percent growth this year despite the government's official forecast of 8 percent.